In 2004 when David Vitter was running for Senator in Louisiana, he warned of the terrible toll gay marriage would have on our society. In statement on “Protecting the Sanctity of Marriage” he said, “The Hollywood left is redefining the most basic institution in human history, and our two U.S. Senators won’t do anything about it. We need a U.S. Senator who will stand up for Louisiana values, not Massachusetts’s values. I am the only Senate Candidate to coauthor the Federal Marriage Amendment; the only one fighting for its passage.” Vitter once compared the devastation of gay marriage to Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, which as someone from Louisiana should know is pretty destructive, and said during the debate on the amendment, “I don’t believe there’s any issue that’s more important than this one.”

Despite his efforts, however, the Federal Marriage Amendment failed to pass and Massachusetts did redefine marriage by legalizing gay marriage. With the sanctity of marriage so severely degraded it was inevitable that Vitter’s own marriage would suffer. Yesterday, we learned of the terrible personal cost to Vitter when it was revealed that his telephone number appeared in the records of the “DC Madam,” Deborah Jeane Palfrey, which were releasedonline.

“This was a very serious sin in my past for which I am, of course, completely responsible,” he said in a statement released by his office. “Several years ago, I asked for and received forgiveness from God and my wife in confession and marriage counseling. Out of respect for my family, I will keep my discussion of the matter there–with God and them. But I certainly offer my deep and sincere apologies to all I have disappointed and let down in any way.”

Though it is very magnanimous of Vitter to accept responsibility for his transgressions, is he really to blame? After the Hollywood left redefined marriage, it must have been a very difficult and confusing time for him. The failure of the passage of the Federal Marriage Amendment must have taken a severe toll on him as he struggled to figure out what marriage really is if even gays can do it. As he grappled with the issue, is it any surprise that he found solace in the embrace of a disinterested paid companion?

Rated 100% by the Christian Coalition for his pro-family voting record and his support of such issues as abstinence-only sex education, Vitter first went to Congress in 1999 when he was elected to fill the seat vacated by Speaker of the House Robert Livingston after it was revealed that Livingston, who had attacked Clinton for the Monica Lewinsky affair, had himself had extramarital affairs. (In fact, Clinton’s support of the Defense of Marriage Act may have been an acknowledgment of the role gay marriage played in his own transgressions.) Vitter later had to scuttle plans to run for governor when a newspaper planned to write a story about an affair he was having with a New Orleans prostitute. “Our [marriage] counseling sessions have … led us to the rather obvious conclusion that it’s not time to run for governor,” he said. Already the insidious influence of gay marriage was starting to weaken his own marriage.

Vitter is a strong supporter of Rudolph Giuliani, who also knows about the havoc that gay marriage, and just being around gay people, can have on real marriages. Giuliani‘s problems with his marriage were probably the result of his association with the gay couple he lived with after he was thrown out of Gracie Mansion by his wife because he was having an affair with another woman. When Vitter was appointed as Giuliani‘s Southern Regional Chairman, he said, “It’s very clear to me that he’s not running for president to advance some liberal social agenda” and the contact that he has had with good family men like Vitter already seems to have changed Giuliani’s position on gays.

The nefarious influence of gay marriage is already spreading around the country as Errol Louis points out in a column in the New York Daily News. “There are disturbing signs all over the country that conservatives were right to predict that proponents of odd and radical sexual practices would try to slip through the political and legal doors opened by the gay rights movement,” he wrote yesterday of the slippery slope of gay marriage. “Advocates of same-sex marriage should recognize that you don’t have to be a religious fanatic or a bigot to wonder, with a certain uneasiness, where all of this is heading,” said Louis, who no doubt realizes that the loosening of the meaning of marriage began with the Supreme Court’s 1967 Loving v. Virginia case, which overturned miscegenation laws. Mildred Loving herself recently acknowledged the case’s ramifications when she came out in favor of gay marriage on the 40th anniversary of the case. Hopefully, our new Supreme Court will overturn this ill-considered ruling soon.

It is unfortunate that liberals, who like to pry into people’s personallives, felt it necessary to divulge information about Vitter’s sexual transgressions when God and his wife already told him that they forgave him. Although we don’t know what God said, we do know that his wife’s forgiveness seems to be a bit of a change from what she said in 2000 about Hillary Clinton’s response to the Monica Lewinsky scandal. “I’m a lot more like Lorena Bobbitt than Hillary. If he does something like that, I’m walking away with one thing, and it’s not alimony, trust me,” she said, referring to the woman who famously emasculated her husband with a kitchen knife. If she hasn’t already carried out this threat, then perhaps it is because she, too, realizes that her husband was powerless to stop himself in the face of the threat gay marriage poses.

I wonder what it is going to take wake America up to the damage gay marriage has already done. To the long list of gay marriage casualties, which includes Britney Spears, Ted Haggard and Rudy Giuliani, we can now add another name. How many more is it going to take? For the sake of David Vitter’s marriage, I hope that Congress revives the Federal Marriage Amendment and renames it the David Vitter Marriage Amendment, in honor of one man who tragically exemplifies the havoc that gay marriage has wrought in our society.

Pam took a nice little dip into Freeperland the other day to see how the other side is reacting to this news. Predictably, there’s a lot of huffing about how there must be some Democrats on the madam’s list too, and how this is a private matter in which the public has no business snooping. Oh, and lots of bashing of the left’s presumed lack of values.

Argh. The willful wrongheadedness and double-standards on display are infuriating! I would agree that this man’s marital fidelity issues would normally be no one else’s business… except for the fact that he’s setting public policy by which the rest of us are expected to live! That *makes* it the public’s business to know whether he can walk the walk on sanctity of marriage as well as talk the talk. If he’s going to impose standards on other people, he’d better damn well be able to live up to them himself.

The right regularly goes on harping on values and judging others, yet when someone on their side fails their *own* values test… they’re the first to scream foul if anyone else calls them on it. They keep handing the left a perfect weapon, yet they act as though it’s somehow unsportsmanlike to actually *use* that weapon. It’s as if the word ‘hypocrite’ no longer stings them because they’ve become so inured to the idea of saying one thing and doing another.

Moreover, the stark indignation with which they meet such criticism is appalling… as though it’s unreasonable to expect them to actually live up to the moral standards they mean to impose on other people.